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Pan Am Games organizers need to be more open: Editorial

Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games organizers want $4,200 to let people see what their tax dollars are funding. What are they trying to hide?

Letter outlines more than $4,200 in printing and shipping fees for a Star reporter's freedom of information request about the upcoming Pan Am Games.

Mon., Nov. 17, 2014

It’s the most expensive multi-sport event in Ontario’s history — costing $2.5 billion — but Toronto Pan Am Games officials say they can’t afford to make documents public on how key projects are progressing.

This raises an obvious question: What are they trying to hide?

The Star has requested internal communications and emails concerning the status of 10 new sports facilities under construction, and on any delays, over an 18-month period. This data should be readily available through the provincial Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

But, as reported by the Star’s Jennifer Pagliaro, the Toronto organizing committee of the 2015 Pan Am Games is demanding more than $4,200 for copies of these records. They originally wanted more than $5,700 to let the public see details about what its tax dollars are funding.

It’s nothing short of outrageous.

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The Star revised its request and managed to trim the bill to $4,219 with a lot of that going toward printing costs for 5,808 pages, at 20 cents a page. Pan Am officials are refusing to provide these records more cheaply on a CD. They claim they just don’t have the software to do so, and don’t know how to reliably scrub confidential “metadata” from their files.

This seems odd since other ministries and governments routinely provide records in a digital format. Perhaps Pan Am Games organizers are poorly served by their in-house computer staff. That’s readily solved through better hiring. It’s far more likely that the problem isn’t a lack of IT talent but an unwillingness to be fully open with the public.

An effective way to block prying eyes is to impose a ridiculously high fee to access documents that authorities want to keep secret.

Which brings us back to our original question: What have they got to hide? Taxpayers are well within their rights to ask given the gush of expensive scandal in recent years, including the Liberal government’s politically motivated gas-plant cancellations, eHealth and ORNGE air ambulance abuses and, most recently, questionable government spending on a MaRS office tower bail out.

In light of that dubious history, and the vast amount of public dollars that Pan Am organizers are happily spending, more clarity is in order.

Games officials insist their work is going well. But that’s difficult to accept on trust given their failure to disclose documents that would shed light on the matter. In the interest of accountability and transparency, firm new steps should be taken to make these records public. Anything less risks undermining confidence in games that are, after all, meant to draw us all together.

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